What Is Wrong With Common Core? Part 3

Common Core suppresses creativity instead of encouraging it.

Common Core is quickly eroding the idea of “creativeness” and replacing it with “uniformity.” Traditionally the classroom has been a place for students to offer their ideas and expand their realm of thinking. Teachers have long encouraged their students to think outside the box and push themselves to dream big. How else will we produce the next generation of innovators, inventors and world changers if we stifle our children’s creativity?

But Common Core does just that. It takes away a teacher’s ability to expand a child’s mind and reduces it to mere pages in a book that must be followed. A teacher, who once was a creative superhero of sorts, is reduced to not much more than a mouthpiece or a technician, repeating the copyrighted script of Common Core.

Nicholas Tampio, Associate Professor of Political Science at Fordham University says,“The class… has gone from one where teachers, aides, parents, and students work hard to create a rewarding educational experience, to one where the teachers and students use materials designed by a major publishing house.”

Further, since a teacher’s performance is linked to student’s standardized test scores, the classroom has evolved into a test machine, crowding out creativity in favor of has evolved into a test machine, crowding out creativity in favor of excessive test preparation. The combination of copyrighted curriculum and educator evaluations tied to test scores, creates an environment in which critical thinking and innovation gets marginalized. As a result, experienced and loving teachers have left their once loved profession and students are paying the price. Our education system has been reduced to a factory of normalcy, regularity and commonality– all words which accurately describe the Common Core Standards.

We need to protect our children from the dangers of academic uniformity and allow them to explore the world using their God given creative minds.

I think David Greene, longtime educator and author, says it best, “Imagine your brain surgeon having to “follow the book” while operating on you or lose his job. While you are on the table, he discovers an unforeseen problem that, because of his experience and practical wisdom, calls for a spontaneous change of plan, yet he can’t do what he knows will work. You die on the table… So have students. He retires early, frustrated with conditions… So have the best teachers.”